White House returns to Obamacare sales mode

President Barack Obama will launch a coordinated campaign Tuesday by the White House, congressional Democrats and their outside allies to return attention to why the Affordable Care Act passed in the first place.

After two months of intense coverage of the botched HealthCare.gov rollout, the president will host a White House event kicking off a three-week drive to refocus the public on the law’s benefits, senior administration officials told POLITICO.

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W.H. returns to Obamacare sales mode — Jim VandeHei reports

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The White House will take the lead in emphasizing a different benefit each day until the Dec. 23 enrollment deadline for Jan. 1 coverage. The daily message will be amplified through press events and social media by Democratic members of Congress, the Democratic National Committee, congressional campaign committees and advocacy organizations, officials said.

The fresh push is an attempt to get back to the game plan that Democrats wanted to pursue before the faulty website forced them into full-time damage control. The president needs to rebuild confidence in the law among the public and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill, who have threatened to roll back aspects of Obamacare if the insurance marketplace didn’t improve quickly — and refocus attention on what would be lost if it were repealed.

Now that the website appears to be mostly functional, the West Wing thinks it has the ability to return to sales mode.

“Healthcare.gov met our self-imposed November 30th deadline and even as we continue to make improvements to the website, we’ll also remind the public about how the Affordable Care Act is already making a positive difference in the lives of millions of Americans today,” said Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman. “The benefits of these consumer protections will only accumulate in the weeks and months ahead.”

Obama won’t declare the website fixed during Tuesday’s event. White House officials acknowledge HealthCare.gov still isn’t working as smoothly as it should, and that this renewed messaging push will run alongside efforts to make further repairs to the insurance marketplace and to target key populations for enrollment.

But he will return to a theme he first pursued in October: Obamacare is more than a website.

“What the White House is doing is what the White House had hoped they would spend the last two months doing, which is going out, selling the law, selling the benefits of the law,” said a former Obama adviser who framed the shift as a sign of White House confidence. “The fact that they feel comfortable doing that is a healthy sign for the president but also for the long-term benefits of Obamacare.”

Republicans aren’t expected back down from their campaign to weaken the law, and officials said they have been preparing for the Democratic offensive.

“Democrats will spend the next year promising to ‘fix’ ObamaCare, but they’ve already lost all credibility with voters,” said Brad Dayspring, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has already cut a web ad aimed at vulnerable Democrats that concludes with the message: “They can’t be trusted to keep their promises.”

The focus on Obamacare benefits is a political necessity for congressional Democrats, the large majority of whom will face voters in less than a year. Democrats wrote and passed the law in the face of unified Republican opposition, and if voters aren’t aware of the law’s upside — or can’t remember it amid all the problems with the rollout — Democrats will be holding onto an anchor rather than a buoy.

Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill say that in order to get back on offense on Obamacare, they have to draw a two-sided picture: Democrats delivering benefits on one side, and Republicans trying to deny them on the other. That, one party operative said, is what polling says will help them win. Instead, Democrats have spent the past two months blaming a president of their own party for the deficiencies of a law that they own.

Now, Democratic leaders are welcoming the renewed White House push.

“The consequences of Republican repeal are exactly the case that we need to be making — because Republican repeal would take us backward to a broken system that hurts too many Americans — like forcing millions of seniors to pay $1,200 more for their prescription drugs,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Every poll tells us that when we make that case, voters choose Democrats.”

On Wednesday, the White House and Democratic allies will focus on how Americans are paying less for preventative care under Obamacare. On Thursday, they’ll highlight that people with preexisting conditions can no longer be charged more or denied coverage. And on Friday, they’ll emphasize the slowing growth in health care costs.

”We are able to hit reset on the conversation,” said Lori Lodes, senior vice president of the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund. “We have to make sure people understand how the law will benefit them.”